WASHINGTON – Compromise legislation to expand mandatory background checks for gun sales -- a key element of the federal response to the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. – failed Wednesday afternoon in the US Senate.

The inability of President Obama and Democratic leaders to round up the required 60 votes in favor of enhanced background checks dealt a striking defeat to a major initiative of the president’s second term, falling short despite numerous pleas and trips to Washington by families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims, whose children were murdered five months ago by a lone gunman with a semi-automatic assault rifle.

The Senate voted Wednesday afternoon to block the first of nine amendments to Obama’s gun control bill, a compromise forged between senators Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, and Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania to expand background checks for gun buyers.

Despite the bipartisan negotiations, the amendment failed when only 54 senators voted to proceed, falling six votes short. All New England senators voted yes except for Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican from New Hampshire.

“Shame on you!” a spectator in the gallery yelled out in the chamber, prompting a gavel for order.

Erica Lafferty, 27, the daughter of Dawn Hochsprung, principal of Sandy Hook who lost her life in the shooting, said she was disappointed by the vote “but the fact that it got to the floor is good.”

“I’m confident that it will be back, and I also know that I will be here when it does come back,” Lafferty said. “We’re not going away.”

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, praised Manchin and Toomey for their efforts during the debate preceding the series of votes.

“You did the right thing,” McCain said. “What they have tried to do today I think is an act that should be appreciated by those of us who many times avoid taking the tough decisions.”

Senator Christopher Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat in favor of gun control, spoke out against the outsized influence of the gun lobby.

“The longer that I’ve spent in this place, the more I’m convinced that there are people who actually do believe that we should just go back to the days of the wild, wild west,” Murphy said, “that we should usher in a new era of gun control Darwinism in which the good guys have guns, the bad guns, and we just hope that the good guys shoot the bad guys.”

Because of senate procedural rules, a 60-vote threshhold was required for each of the nine amendments to proceed. The other amendments include an assault weapons ban and limits on high capacity magazines.

The gun debate has been marked by intense lobbying on both sides, big-spending influence campaigns targeting individual senators, and some vitriolic attacks, particularly by some groups opposed to firearms restrictions.

Groups beyond the National Rifle Association, the traditional representative of the gun lobby, have played a major role in the debate. The National Association for Gun Rights used email alerts, online videos, and a Facebook page to convey mocking imagery that targeted individual senators.

In a series of Facebook posts, the group showed Obama as a puppeteer, controlling the strings of Toomey. Stamped in red ink is, “Toomey Sold Out Your Gun Rights.”

The gun rights group similarly depicted all 16 Republicans who voted last week to prevent a GOP filibuster and move forward on the gun legislation debate. The 16 also are shown with their faces on sticks, tagged by Facebook users with unfriendly names. Senator Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee, is “Socialist.” Senator Tom Coburn, of Oklahoma, is “communist #9.” Senator John Hoeven, of South Dakota, is “Judas Bastard.”

Senator Kelly Ayotte, of New Hampshire, is “liberal [expletive] 1” while Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, is “liberal [expletive] 2.”

Polls show that nearly 90 percent of Americans support a strong system of background checks for gun purchases. But the looming failure of gun-control legislation illustrates how vocal minorities are exerting strong influence on congressional debates by targeting individual senators with outside pressure, channeled through Internet organizing.

Some of that organizing directly targets senators who seek compromise.

“NO DEALS, NO GUN CONTROL,” the National Association for Gun Rights blasts on its website.

Few have experienced as much heat as Collins, a Maine Republican who has built a reputation for being moderate and open to compromise. A host of groups in recent days have taken out ads in Maine trying to win her over, including groups supporting gun-control legislation.

Organizing for Action, an offshoot of President Obama’s campaign network, ran an ad Friday on the Bangor Daily News website with this message: “Tell Senator Collins: It’s time to close background check loopholes.” That ad came a day after a full-page ad from the National Rifle Association that asked, “Will Obama’s gun control proposals actually work? His own experts say, ‘No.’”

The group on Monday posted a doctored and unflattering photo of Collins with her eyes bulging as if she were a zombie. Within an hour, 5,413 people liked it on Facebook and 490 people had commented on it.

Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, Wednesday morning criticized the president for using the Newtown, Conn., families “as props.”

At a breakfast with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, he said the legislation would not have prevented the Sandy Hook shootings, and he criticized the vote as being mostly for show.

“A lot of things in Washington are window dressing, it’s a dog and pony show, it’s a parade, it’s theatrics, it’s histrionics, all to show people that something bad happened — which it did. Something terribly tragic happened,” he said.

But, he added, “None of the proposals really would have addressed the tragedy.”

I'll take that scenario over a guy going around current gun laws to avoid a background check or a record. Absolutely.

If a person steals a gun, the crime is reported, and authorities have been alerted. But even before the moment arises, a person planning a criminal act will be more hesitant to steal a gun, because 1) it's riskier than a loophole [can get caught, and even injured] and 2) it's more troublesome than a loophole.

70 million background checks have been performed since Obama was elected on his first term. Something like 13 resulted in prosection with something like 50 even being turned over to the prosecutor. I think there were like 44k turned down which I will bet a lot of those were false reports which when ironed out turned out to be granted in the long run.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by |Zach|

All kinds of people vote. Not enough of those people think highly enough of Trump to make him President but all kinds of people vote.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donger

So, if they were polling better than Trump and the primary goal was to prevent Hillary from becoming POTUS, perhaps it would have been a better strategic decision to nominate someone who actually had a chance of beating her and preventing that than nominating Donald Trump.

That's your argument for not expanding it, or is this your question to me?

Both. How are you going to know if I sold my firearm without conducting a background check without requiring universal registration?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by |Zach|

All kinds of people vote. Not enough of those people think highly enough of Trump to make him President but all kinds of people vote.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donger

So, if they were polling better than Trump and the primary goal was to prevent Hillary from becoming POTUS, perhaps it would have been a better strategic decision to nominate someone who actually had a chance of beating her and preventing that than nominating Donald Trump.

The benefit is that it prevents many convicts, illegal aliens, fugitives, and mentally ill people [which is huge], from purchasing a gun from a FFL, unless there's a loophole or they break the law.

Quote:

70 million background checks have been performed since Obama was elected on his first term. Something like 13 resulted in prosection with something like 50 even being turned over to the prosecutor. I think there were like 44k turned down which I will bet a lot of those were false reports which when ironed out turned out to be granted in the long run.

The benefit is that it prevents many convicts, illegal aliens, fugitives, and mentally ill people [which is huge], from purchasing a gun from a FFL, unless there's a loophole or they break the law.

Nice.

No, it doesn't because peopel who shouldn't have a gun that want a gun usually go about getting a gun in ways that are illegal to begin with.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by |Zach|

All kinds of people vote. Not enough of those people think highly enough of Trump to make him President but all kinds of people vote.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donger

So, if they were polling better than Trump and the primary goal was to prevent Hillary from becoming POTUS, perhaps it would have been a better strategic decision to nominate someone who actually had a chance of beating her and preventing that than nominating Donald Trump.

Why are background checks "gun-grabbing?" Do you really not want people to go through background checks in order to get a gun, or do you think it's a pretext for something else?

Can all background checks be a pretext to confiscate guns later? Sure because it makes every transaction have a paper trail and if the gov were to later require that all 4473 forms be turned in you would have a registration.

That said that's not the actual issue with this bill. The problem with this legislation(and frankly much if not most legislation out there regardless of topic), is that you have what people claim it's for and what it's actually for.

It is claimed that this legislation is to prevent criminals from getting access to firearms. The lions share of data on the issue of background checks is they are of limited value because it's easy for criminals to get around them if they want to. The most commonly mentioned method that is used is straw purchases. But the reality is even if all straw purchases were caught, we have such an inability to catch people smuggling drugs why would anyone think we could stop people from smuggling gun parts(i.e. in many cases generic hunks of metal). Simply put it won't have a measurable impact on criminal availability of firearms. Just ask the Mexicans.

They say the intent of the law is to get guns out of the hands of criminals and to the average person that sound reasonable which is why it's claimed. But since it is unlikely to have any measurable effect on keeping guns out of the hands of criminals are the politicians just stupid or do they have another intent behind this?

So the one thing we can clearly show that this bill will do is increase the price of all private party firearms transactions by $30-$50 on average. Part of that is the cost of running the background check and part of that is the time that a licensed dealer has to spend to do the paperwork. Now basic economic theory says, if you raise the price of something you generally lower the demand. Consider the low end of firearms purchases say $200-$300, forcing them to go to a dealer will add 10-20% to the cost of the purchase. For some of the lower income people this will directly impact if they can afford to buy a used firearm or not. This policy will likely have a measurable impact on demand for lower priced firearms and I suspect will price some of the lower income people out of buying firearms. This isn't rocket science basic economics shows this.

So ask yourself what the actual intent of this bill is, to raise hurdles on criminals getting access to guns where history has shown they will get around them fairly easily. Or is the intent to raise the price of 20-40% of firearms transactions that are private party where economics shows if you raise the pricing you lower demand and reduce the number of people buying guns?

You can decide which one is the more likely intent.

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"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t*rd by the clean end"

Both. How are you going to know if I sold my firearm without conducting a background check without requiring universal registration?

By closing the loopholes and making all transactions go through mandatory background checks, more dealers are going to comply, resulting in an increased hardship to people who want to purchase a gun by skirting around the law.

No, it doesn't because peopel who shouldn't have a gun that want a gun usually go about getting a gun in ways that are illegal to begin with.

Or they go through loopholes that are not illegal, but should be. Let's close those loopholes! Also, as I mentioned above, the expansion of background checks would create an increased hardship on the person who wants to break the law. And that's a good thing.

By closing the loopholes and making all transactions go through mandatory background checks, more dealers are going to comply, resulting in an increased hardship to people who want to purchase a gun by skirting around the law.

That has absolutley nothing to do with me selling a firearm to someone. Most dealers do background checks.

Secondly there is the "undue burden" argument. If it's too much of a pain in the ass to produce ID to vote, since voting is a right, the same should apply for all rights, generally speaking.

Understand this, most dealers perform background checks simply to avoid any future liability which would put them out of business and possibly in jail.

Secondly, most criminals will not be buying firearms through legal channels anyway

Thirdly, background checks are not registration, therefore you have no way of proving if someone performed a background check or not before he sold his .38 to his pal.

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by |Zach|

All kinds of people vote. Not enough of those people think highly enough of Trump to make him President but all kinds of people vote.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donger

So, if they were polling better than Trump and the primary goal was to prevent Hillary from becoming POTUS, perhaps it would have been a better strategic decision to nominate someone who actually had a chance of beating her and preventing that than nominating Donald Trump.

Consider the low end of firearms purchases say $200-$300, forcing them to go to a dealer will add 10-20% to the cost of the purchase. For some of the lower income people this will directly impact if they can afford to buy a used firearm or not. This policy will likely have a measurable impact on demand for lower priced firearms and I suspect will price some of the lower income people out of buying firearms. This isn't rocket science basic economics shows this.

So ask yourself what the actual intent of this bill is, to raise hurdles on criminals getting access to guns where history has shown they will get around them fairly easily. Or is the intent to raise the price of 20-40% of firearms transactions that are private party where economics shows if you raise the pricing you lower demand and reduce the number of people buying guns?

You can decide which one is the more likely intent.

The inverse of this is: does the opposition really care about keeping people safe, or do they just want guns to be cheaper so they can sell to more inner city gangs who can shoot each other?

Or they go through loopholes that are not illegal, but should be. Let's close those loopholes! Also, as I mentioned above, the expansion of background checks would create an increased hardship on the person who wants to break the law. And that's a good thing.

It also puts an increased hardship on someone who doesn't want to break the law and is merely exercising their 2nd amendment.

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by |Zach|

All kinds of people vote. Not enough of those people think highly enough of Trump to make him President but all kinds of people vote.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donger

So, if they were polling better than Trump and the primary goal was to prevent Hillary from becoming POTUS, perhaps it would have been a better strategic decision to nominate someone who actually had a chance of beating her and preventing that than nominating Donald Trump.

The inverse of this is: does the opposition really care about keeping people safe, or do they just want guns to be cheaper so they can sell to more inner city gangs who can shoot each other?

strawman argument

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by |Zach|

All kinds of people vote. Not enough of those people think highly enough of Trump to make him President but all kinds of people vote.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donger

So, if they were polling better than Trump and the primary goal was to prevent Hillary from becoming POTUS, perhaps it would have been a better strategic decision to nominate someone who actually had a chance of beating her and preventing that than nominating Donald Trump.